Chronicles of Cancer: From Diagnosis to Hope with Michael Summers

Chronicles of Cancer: From Diagnosis to Hope with Michael Summers

The author reflects on the process of writing their book, emphasizing how their journey involved solving problems and quickly understanding new areas they were unfamiliar with. This combination of skills led them to their current position

Transcript

Michael Summers - Stereo Final Cut +1

[00:00:00] 

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This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. I'm here today with author Michael Summers. Thanks for joining me, Michael.

Michael Summers: My pleasure. Thank you, Mike. 

Mike Roth: Michael Summers is a retired technology professional, a lifelong learner, a cancer survivor, And he has a passion for curiosity [00:02:00] and storytelling to inspire others.

Michael, since I grew up in the technology industries, I'm curious, what part of the technology industry were you in? 

Michael Summers: It spanned an awful lot of years and did a lot of different places. My first real technology job was back when the insurance companies, which I worked for up in Hartford, Connecticut, were going from systems that were paper systems to computer systems.

Ah, yes, the old 360 world.   

Eactly, and at that time it was distributed AS 400s.

But that's where I cut my teeth. And it was essentially an inside management

consulting group that I was part of. And I was trained by, the very best people. And so I learned how to understand systems. Particularly, how to take what were manual workflows and turn them into requirements for computer [00:03:00] systems. Went from there to a computer startup in Chicago. And it was a real trip. It was a small company that was estimating the cost to repair and replace

different burnt components in houses and it was sold to insurance companies in order to help them get an accurate value for repairing and replacing homes on homeowner insurance policies. I did that for a while. And then I went into a little bit of management consulting on my own for leveraged buyouts. And there I was utilizing a lot of skills I had learned. I acquired it when I had my MBA, and I was essentially evaluating new companies that were trying to raise money or be purchased by venture capitalists or others. I did that for several years. [00:04:00] If anybody is familiar with that time frame in the 80s, the valuations of those companies got crazy. 

I was very uncomfortable with the amounts, the values I was being pushed to

generate, and eventually I just gave up, I quit. I moved on to Silicon Valley, and at Silicon Valley, I got there at a bad time.

There was, it was in the early 90s, there was no technology jobs around. I found some work.

luckily with a land investment company where we took big pieces of land around the San Francisco Bay area, took them through the political process, and then prepared them to sell to home builders, large home builders. That market eventually dried up, and then I was able to pick back. Pick up and then get back into technology where I once again, very [00:05:00] lucky got a job as a CEO with a little computer startup that was very unique. It was offering firmware solutions to do what they called back then multi booting of operating systems.

For example Mac. operating systems, IBM, Microsoft systems. At that time, they were all tied More or less inextricably to the hardware. 

Mike Roth: Correct. 

Michael Summers: and it was an interesting time. IBM was fighting Motorola and IBM were fighting Apple, and we were in the middle. And the reason we were in the middle is because we had the inventor. open firmware on our side.

Mike Roth: What was the name of the company?

Michael Summers: It was called Firmworks. 

So I, I did that for a couple years. Was we were very successful. And was essentially the the guy who had to raise money and who ran the business side of things going around and Talking IBM, [00:06:00] Motorola, and others into giving us money to keep us going and then we provide their software and firmware to them.

So I licensed that all around the world. Japan, Taiwan, United States.

And then that market went down and I had an invitation to join SRI International, which was formerly known as Stanford Research Institute. And I took on a job as the Vice President of Commercialization of Technologies for the Computer Science Department.

Mike Roth: That's great. Now, you had a great background both professionally and personally. How did that background shape your cancer journey and your storytelling in your book? 

Michael Summers: I think that's a great question.

Writing this book, I've been thinking over exactly how I've ended up here. And it seems to me that It was some combination of problem solving, of being thrown into new [00:07:00] areas that I knew nothing about, but having to quickly understand them, make some sense of them.

Sort of a getting a layman's approach on very technical subjects.

Mike Roth: And is that how you approached your journey with cancer?

Michael Summers: Would like to say yes right away, I jumped right into it, but no. I, my cancer journey began very abruptly with hospitalization for something else. And when I ended up in the hospital I was in great pain, and I was having so much trouble dealing with the pain that my, my first opportunity of using my background was to try to pull myself back and understand how to deal with the pain. And I tried, my father was a very stoic fellow, very technical, research scientist and his [00:08:00] approach was the first one I tried, which was to just grin and bear it. That was insufficient. 

Mike Roth: I could understand that for a lot of people. 

Michael Summers: Eventually and then I tried the concept of I'm in better shape than a lot of people around me. The problem was that people were. in worse shape or the same shape as me. And I didn't get any solace from that.

Mike Roth: By the way, what type of cancer were you diagnosed with? 

Michael Summers: I was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer known as CML or chronic myeloma leukemia. 

Finally, getting back to the pain thing, finally I was able to make use of something I had heard somewhere along the line, I don't know from where exactly I remembered it, but it was a ride the wave , an approach. So the interesting thing, at least in my experience about pain, was it did come in waves.

What I had to do was [00:09:00] concentrate on the down part of the wave when I was not in the severe

pain.

And I would step back and look at that and I figured out that about 70 percent of the time I really wasn't in excruciating pain. 30 percent I was. And that's how I rode it.. I just, I got used to preparing myself for those waves.

Mike Roth: We did a whole show on C L L blood cancer. And that was a very interesting show. Your cancer was a form of leukemia?

Michael Summers: That's right. It's caused by what I found out later, and this goes back to my technical background in trying to deconstruct what was going on with me, about a very strange flip of chromosomes. It's called the Philadelphia chromosome. And there are two little chromosomes on the helix that flip for no reason.

that anybody particularly knows. And that's what happened to me at the age of 70, [00:10:00] 71, somewhere in there.

Mike Roth: So how did they cure it? 

Michael Summers: They don't really cure it. What they do is they give you chemotherapy, in my case, in the form of a pill. So it sounds worse than it is. And what that does is it begins to work on those chromosomes and it begins switching them. And those are made by the blood. and the interaction of the blood going through your bones, essentially. The way they measure how well you're doing is they do these chromosomal assays. And You don't just flip and then everything goes good. You have to see what percentage of those chromosomes are changing, and that indicates how well you're doing.

And I've been tracking that for 2 years now, and there's a [00:11:00] threshold below which they say you're in remission. Unfortunately, I'm not there yet, but I'm going in the right direction.

Mike Roth: Oh, that's good. That's good. My brother had a blood cancer, and he was finally, in quotation marks, cured with a bone marrow transplant from his own son. 

Michael Summers: Oh, that's terrific.

Mike Roth: I wasn't qualified. I took the test but they said nope, not a good match so my brother went to his son. Now you decided to collaborate with another cancer patient named Jim for your book. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Jim and why you decided to pick him to collaborate on a book. 

Michael Summers: Sure.

 Met Jim in a writing group that I'm part of in The VillageSs. And that writing group is headed up by Mark Newhouse. And Jim is a part of that group. And Jim is an excellent writer. He comes from a completely different background than [00:12:00] me. He was a teacher of English and wrote several books on the that are still in publication and used in schools, primarily in high schools. And he's an older guy than me. He's about 10 years older than me. But whereas when I was a kid, not to jump back too far, but I had polio as a kid.

I was five years old. And at the time that I had polio, the cure, if you will, was that You had to wear orthopedic shoes, which immediately set you apart from everybody else. You weren't allowed to exercise, which is completely ridiculous now. And you're just set aside. Jim, on the other hand, was a star athlete. He was a great softball player. Later in his life, he went on to be a coach, a manager, and to this day here in The Villages, he's an excellent batter and for being 84 and [00:13:00] he's probably in better physical shape than I am. We came from different worlds.

Mike Roth: There's a great deal of proof, at least.

anecdotal proof that people who have retained more muscle mass live longer. So when you put your book together with Jim, how did you balance the challenges of cancer with offering a hope to your readers?

Michael Summers: We have come about our path in different ways with different types of support and obviously different viewpoints. For me, found solace in reverting back to my understanding of systems, in effect, or in essence, how my body works. And that gave me some amount of peace because it wasn't, it was overcoming fear by trying to understand the system. Jim, on the other hand, did not have as rough of [00:14:00] a

as I did through cancer. But the impact for him was more on side effects of the medicines. 

Mike Roth: Yes.

Michael Summers: As well as, I think, the cycle, and I'm speaking for him now, maybe I shouldn't, but, he, I think he In a position where he was used to being the superman and he had to deal with the psychological effect of not being Superman, but rather a cancer victim.

Mike Roth: Did either one of you rely on marijuana for the side effects of the medications? 

Michael Summers: At first, I did. I frankly don't know if Jim did or not. We've actually never talked about it. I did a little bit at the beginning, and after I got out of the hospital. Yeah. It didn't really help that much, nor did regular pain medication.

Mike Roth: Really? Which hospital were you in? 

Michael Summers: I began, when I first [00:15:00] ended up in the hospital, it was through the emergency care center here. And they sent me right away up to West Orange Hospital in Ocala. What had happened was, I didn't even know I had cancer at that point. I knew nothing, but I had this huge hematoma that ran from the back of my neck all the way down to my butt. Yeah, it was horrible, and I was in great pain. And The first week I spent in the hospital there they had to remove, evacuate blood that had built up around my chest wall. And then the second, and that's when they found out I had the cancer, and then the second week they transferred me to the main hospital in Ocala, where they began to run the test to understand what kind of cancer I

had.

Mike Roth: Can I ask you a question? Why didn't you go to someplace like Moffitt or Shands?

Michael Summers: That's a good question. I think it was primarily because it just came out of the blue. It was about two years ago, almost, [00:16:00] today.

And bang. I was at the emergent care center. I was freaking out. They were freaking out.

My wife, Mary Jo, was probably the calmest person there. And it was, let's get him, we gotta get him to the hospital right away. Who can take you the fastest?

the the soonest.

Mike Roth: And what kind of emotional lessons did you learn from your experience, both practical and personal that you put into the book that you think is gonna resonate with readers?    

Michael Summers: I think that the most important thing for me was relating the journey.

 I don't react well to people telling me what to do. Or particularly how to do it. I like to understand how to do it. 

Mike Roth: How many years did you spend as a CEO? Many

years. So you learned to do it yourself. 

Michael Summers: To listen. Yes. To, to rely upon experts. And so I [00:17:00] gravitated toward finding the best people I could. But I think that it was more in my mind about the journey and relating to readers what the journey was like for me. And Jim does the same thing from a totally different perspective. We're two, two bookends and cancers in the middle.

Mike Roth: Okay, so he wrote his part of the book and you wrote your part of the book.

Is that how it worked?

Michael Summers: Pretty much, yes. We completely separate. We didn't cooperate on first drafts. And we're in touch up phase right now and stitching the chapters together so that they flow evenly. 

Mike Roth AI 9-11-24: Let's take a break and talk to Dr. Craig Curtis about Alzheimer's 

Mike Roth: This is Mike Roth and Dr. Craig Curtis. We're talking about Alzheimer's disease. What is the diagnostic process to split the difference between someone who has Alzheimer's and someone who has a different [00:18:00] form of dementia? 

Dr. Craig Curtis: That's a great question, Mike. So, Alzheimer's disease in the past was a clinical diagnosis.

And we would talk to the patient and the family and they would tell us about this progressive memory loss and maybe other symptoms that have been occurring over the past three to five years. And ,we would simply test their memory and maybe wait another year or two and retest their memory to look for decline.

Nowadays, it's completely different. As a matter of fact, now our diagnostic process involves actually looking for amyloid in the brain, which we now know causes Alzheimer's disease. 

Mike Roth: How do you see amyloid in the brain? 

Dr. Craig Curtis: We can see amyloid in the brain using PET scans, which is the most common way. And now we're working on using blood tests, which are going to be coming out in the next few years.

In fact, there's already one blood test that is FDA cleared to detect amyloid in the blood, [00:19:00] which is reflecting. Amyloid in the brain, and that would be the differential between another type of dementia and Alzheimer's. Yes, sir. 

Warren: With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life.

To learn more, visit his website, craig curtis md.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

Mike Roth AI 9-11-24: I'm back with Michael Summers.

Looking back at what you know now, what was the most rewarding part of the journey? 

Michael Summers: I think it was coming to know myself better and understanding where my strengths and weaknesses were and also coming to the realization that formed a

road map for the kind of support I needed understand what kind of support do I need. My wife was there, obviously all through it Mary Jo was wonderful [00:20:00] and Beyond that, the doctors, in particular, choosing my oncology doctor after I got out of the hospital. I did have some choice there. And I didn't do deep, deep research, but I listened to a lot of people and I picked a person who turned out to be fabulous. For lots of reasons.

Mike Roth: Huh.

Michael Summers: So I learned about that. And the other thing I learned through all of this was that you really have to pay attention. I had to pay attention. I shouldn't be proscriptive. Had to pay attention. Things like, that you wouldn't think of necessarily. What types of alternative therapies there are, what types of testing is there and to repair yourself.

So for example, I had a bone marrow sample taken, a biopsy. That was really painful. And I was frightened about it. [00:21:00] Primarily because way back when I was five years old, I had to have what they called then a spinal tap, the same thing. And I, it's one of my clearest memories, earliest in my life. So I was scared. I had to prepare myself for that.

Mike Roth: How come they don't put you under anesthesia for a bone marrow test like that? 

Michael Summers: It's a two part procedure. So they give you, think of a needle going into a bone. So there's the outer part of the bone, like the outer crust of the earth. For that part, they give you a local anesthetic, because apparently that must be the worst. And then it goes into the second layer, which is, I think, a marrow . 

And then it goes right into the heart of your bone, in your pelvic bone, . And they can't give you a a sedative for that because that would mess up the test.

Mike Roth: Interesting. Interesting. You've worked on the book for how long? 

Michael Summers: It's been [00:22:00] seriously about a year and a half. I'd say a year and a half

Mike Roth: And how far away are you from the release date of your book? 

Michael Summers: Be releasing it in time for the Royal Palm Literary Awards which are conducted in the entry is by the end of April, so we're going to have it in before then, probably in May.

Mike Roth: You have a working title for the book?

Michael Summers: Not really. We have a less than working title which is Cancer, Mike and Jim's Special Adventure. 

Mike Roth: Okay, that sounds like a good title. 

Michael Summers: That's been reviewed by no one of authority or knowledge.

Mike Roth: And you intend to place the book on sale through Amazon?

Yes. As a self published book? 

Michael Summers: That's the plan right now, although, it's interesting, here in The Villages, there are a lot of people who get involved in not just writing, but also publishing. And we've had a few people who have, Floated with us the idea that maybe we might go with [00:23:00] a publisher, but our plan is to basically self publish at this point.

Mike Roth: And neither one of you have published a book before?

Michael Summers: book before? Jim

Oh, okay.

Jim has done a number of textbooks, but not any creative non fiction.

Mike Roth: Okay, so if you've listened to this podcast before, by, by listeners, no, I always suggest to authors, turn the book into an audiobook as quickly as you can. For the simple reason that there are people who, A, don't read, their eyes aren't as good as they used to be, B, who don't want to sit down and concentrate, But they'll be willing to listen to a book as they're doing exercises at the gym, walking in the neighborhood, or even shopping in Target. 

Michael Summers: And we had a little conversation in preparation for this and I totally get it. I love audio books. I used to do a lot of global traveling for work and listening was the easiest way to make [00:24:00] the flight from San Francisco to Tokyo or from San Francisco to London.

Mike Roth: Yeah, there are a lot of books that you can get away with doing that. Good. Now, if you could give some advice to a 25 year old Michael, based on your knowledge now, what advice would you give to your 25 year old self?

Michael Summers: To my 25 year old self, I would probably say, stay the course. I think you have to follow your heart . dream, or at least try to understand what it is you like to do, rather than listening to others tell you or prescribe for you what you should do in your future. Life really is a wonderful series of opportunities. It's like those waves I talked about with the pain. When you are That young, that aware, you have your strength, you're [00:25:00] physically strong, you feel like you can do almost anything. The hardest thing to do, I think, is to go inside yourself, find out what your strengths are and then go after what you love. 

Mike Roth: Is there going to be a website for the book, or how can people contact you if they have questions?

Michael Summers: There is going to be a website for the book. It's not there yet. If anyone wants to contact me now, I'm at mikebookwriter@gmail.Com . I'd be glad to answer any questions or keep you up to date. 

Mike Roth: Great. Thanks for joining us today, Michael.

Michael Summers: Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you, Mike.

Nancy: Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 a. m. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike at rothvoice dot com. This is a shout out for supporters Ed Williams, Duane Roemmich, Paul Sorgen, Kathy Loving, and Dr. Craig Curtis at K2 in The Villages.

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